


The Lucky 38 Babysitters' Club

by TinyFakeFanficRock



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Babies, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 07:26:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9425645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyFakeFanficRock/pseuds/TinyFakeFanficRock
Summary: Seven companions, one baby.  Hardly fair odds.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Fallout Kink Meme.

Whenever Nellie entered the room with that much purpose in her stride, it always meant they were going to have a long day. Sure enough, she handed her nine-month-old daughter to Veronica and announced, "I need to go make sure the Omertas are behaving. Boone is coming with me for backup, and the rest of you are watching Sadie while I am gone."

"All of us?" objected Cass. "Why not just Lily? She actually likes this stuff!"

"Because many hands make light work, and besides, the diaper pins are too small for her hands."

"Not it for changing diapers," said Cass.

"Not it," chimed in Raul and Arcade almost simultaneously.

"Dammit," grumbled Veronica, now much less enthusiastic about the prospect of babysitting. "Why can't you just take her with you?"

"I am absolutely not taking Sadie to Gomorrah, okay? I think she should at least learn to read before she meets drugged-out hookers and the mob bosses who exploit them."

"Oh, _she_ has to know how to read, but Boone just gets to go?" Veronica snapped, to general laughter.

"I can read!"

Nellie sighed and rubbed the little line between her brows. "Diaper duty is not that bad, Veronica."

"But you fed her maize for lunch! That doesn't even change on the way through!"

"Can we not talk about this?" Raul wrinkled the remaining bits of his nose.

"Look, can you all just keep my kid alive and not burn down the 38 for the next few hours, _please_?"

"If you could only have one of those options, which do you prefer?" asked Arcade.

Nellie punched the wall.

Veronica drew in a "let's get this over with" breath and said, "Hey, I'm sure we'll be fine! We outnumber her and everything. Why don't you get going now?"

"That's better." She launched into a list of instructions for Sadie's care.

When she was still going after five minutes, Arcade finally said, "You know, Lily's an experienced grandmother and you have a doctor right here. You don't need to be such a nervous --"

Nellie reached for the shotgun slung across her back. "You finish that sentence and I _will_ shoot you."

"If I finish it for him, will you shoot me, boss?"

"No. I'll shoot everyone else so you have to babysit by yourself." 

"Keeping real quiet, then."

\---

They did fairly well for the first hour. Rex stood patiently while Sadie practiced pulling up on him, and even tolerated a few pokes at his brain case. It all fell apart, though, when she tried to put her little sun hat on him, and he fled faster than she could crawl after him.

She gave up the chase when she spotted a low-hovering ED-E. He played her a little strain of music and beeped cheerfully. Sadie babbled back and he beeped some more. No one else was quite sure if the conversation was mutually intelligible, but they carried it on intently for some time. 

Then, mournfully, Veronica said, "Smells like it's changing time." She grumbled all the while, but made fairly quick work of the task with Lily holding Sadie's hands safely away from the work area and keeping her from squirming away. Naturally, Sadie wet the fresh diaper before Veronica could get her pants back on, and the whole process began again.

When they set Sadie free again, she crawled excitedly past the workbench, where Raul was apparently trying to ignore everyone as much as possible, straight to the whiskey bottle sitting in front of Cass.

"MISS CASS'S BOTTLE IS NOT FOR YOU. HERE, THIS ONE IS YOURS." Lily switched the bottles and put the whiskey up on a shelf only she could reach, ignoring Cass's loud protests.

Sadie contemplated the new bottle for a long moment, then threw her head back and began to wail.

"Couldn't we just give her an empty one?" asked Cass.

Veronica snorted. "Oh, because that's totally safe."

"I bet she needs another diaper change."

"Shut up. Arcade, read to her or something."

"Er, okay, Sadie, come have storytime with Uncle Arcade."

"Better be the sober storytime," muttered Veronica. "I've heard some stories about _you_."

Arcade ignored her and set Sadie on one knee, his open book on the other. "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of commodities,' its unit being --"

"Christ, Arcade, are you trying to bore her to sleep?" asked Cass, swaying only a little on the chair she was using to reach her confiscated whiskey bottle.

"-- a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodi-- _hey_!" Sadie, apparently not a fan of failed pre-War socioeconomic theories, ripped out the next page and stuffed it in her mouth. Cass, startled by Arcade's cry, fell off the chair before she'd secured the whiskey and started cursing profusely.

Arcade wrested the paper away from the baby, plopped her unceremoniously on the floor, and hurried off in search of Wonderglue.

Raul finally looked up from his workbench. "Here, nieta, try this." Raul set down a Dinky the Dinosaur toy, one of a small army of them Cliff Briscoe had given her, but this one was different: when the newly-added key at its back was wound, its eyes lit up and it walked forward on its own.

Sadie watched, enthralled. She wasn't the only one.

"Wish I'd had one of those when I was a kid," Cass said wistfully.

"Hell, I wish I had one of those now," said Veronica.

"You're too easily impressed, chicas." Raul's tone was self-deprecating as usual, but he was unable to hide all of his smile.

Meanwhile, Sadie's attention span gave out, and she started trying to climb the couch, her eyes fixed on the ashtray on the table beside it.

"Oh no, you don't." Cass swooped in and picked up the ashtray just before Sadie's pudgy little fingers could overturn it. She re-climbed the chair and traded the ashtray for her whiskey bottle, taking a swig before her feet had even hit the floor.

Sadie's face crumpled, and she began sobbing piteously.

Arcade returned, his mended book cradled in the crook of his arm like it was the baby. "Why is she crying now?"

"Because she has this awesome dinosaur --" she pointed "-- and at least three of every other fuckin' toy in the goddamn Mojave, but she only wants to play with the damn ashtray. What the fuck, kid?"

"POOR LITTLE PUMPKIN IS JUST TIRED. I'LL GIVE HER A BOTTLE AND SHE'LL BE ASLEEP IN NO TIME."

"Hey, no! If I have to be in charge of output, I'm gonna be in charge of input, too," said Veronica, scooping up the baby.

Lily showed Veronica the right angle to hold the bottle, and they all enjoyed a silence punctuated only by Sadie's ferocious sucking. When she finished her milk, she sighed, closed her eyes, nuzzled her cheek into Veronica's chest, and smiled. "Okay, maybe this baby thing isn't _so_ bad."

Lily transferred Sadie to her crib and then nodded off in the rocking chair beside it. Everyone else heaved a sigh of relief.

Ten minutes later, Sadie woke up screaming.

\--

An hour later, Sadie had finally managed to stay asleep for more than ten minutes and everyone's frazzled nerves had started to return to normal. Half an hour after that, Boone returned -- alone.

"Everything okay at Gomorrah?"

"Yeah."

"So where the hell is Nellie?"

Boone shrugged. "Ringo got back in town early. She was real happy to see him, and they went to her room at the Wrangler, so it's ... probably gonna be a while. She said there was plenty of milk in the fridge and maybe she'd be back tomorrow."

" _What?_ " Veronica was the one who'd said it, her sleeve over her mouth to avoid waking the baby again, but the faces around the room all reflected her dismay.

Boone shrugged.

Then the elevator dinged again and Nellie hurried into the bedroom to check on Sadie. Boone actually allowed himself a little smile.

"You _shit_!" Veronica threw Sadie's teddy bear at him.

"That's what you get for saying I can't read," Boone said smugly.

"We should have known he was lying when he said more than three words at once," grumbled Arcade.

Nellie came back, relaxed and smiling. "You all did so well! I don't see why I was so worried about leaving her with you. I should go out more often."

Cass drained the rest of her bottle of whiskey.

**Author's Note:**

> When the opportunity presented itself, I couldn't resist making a reference to this glorious fic: http://archiveofourown.org/works/371451


End file.
